In August, Gigabyte made a claim that baffled at least MSI, that scores of its motherboards are Ready for Native PCIe Gen. 3. Along with the likes of ASRock, MSI was one of the first with motherboards featuring PCI-Express 3.0 slots, the company took the pains to educate buyers what PCI-E 3.0 is, and how to spot a motherboard that features it. MSI thinks that Gigabyte made a factual blunder bordering misinformation by claiming that as many as 40 of its motherboards are "Ready for Native PCIe Gen. 3." MSI decided to put its engineering and PR team to build a technically-sound presentation rebutting Gigabyte's claims.

More slides, details follow.

MSI begins by explaining that PCIe support isn't as easy as laying a wire between the CPU and the slot. It needs specifications-compliant lane switches and electrical components, and that you can't count on certain Gigabytes for future-proofing.

MSI claims that apart from the G1.Sniper 2, none of Gigabyte's so-called "Ready for Native PCIe Gen. 3" motherboards are what the badge claims to be, and that the badge is extremely misleading to buyers. Time to refill the popcorn bowl.

Ok, how easy would it be to fake the lane readout? As for one, are there any Gen 3 PCI Express x16 cards MSI could've fitted to the slot?
And what happens if you put a x8 Gen 1 card in a slot of any board? Wouldn't that revert the slot speed to the same speed as the card?
Also, what utility is MSI using to get that readout?

On top of that, Gigabyte never said it'd work for multiple cards, only that the primary slot would operate at x16 Gen 3 speed.

I dunno about the components on the PCB though beyond the switches, which MSI is making a big deal out as the only choice, but there are at least two more companies that already have Gen 3 switches, none of those are used on the Gigabyte board in question though.

Lame to reveal a company's attempt at misinforming us consumers? What are you some kinda blind Gigabyte fanboy? I've had my eye on a Gigabyte Z68 and this only helped me making a more informed purchase decision.
Looking forward to hear Gigabyte's response on this.

New Member

Cool another win for the end user.
I wonder what could be said for the gpu's that is being produced / labeled as Gen 3 PCIe ?
Makes you think about cpu's as well, at least Intel admitted their bugs and is working on the 2011 fix for that.

MSI = Robin Hood men in Tights LOL.
Who would have though that there is still that ancient mythical concept called democracy and a legal system or that which they embody that still lives somewhere today on planet earth, thought it died out 200 years ago and here MSI shows us this is still alive.

Is MSI Chinese / Russian or something, maybe I should move to that country to find democracy & freedom.